This Game We Play
by TheRantDragon
Summary: Huntress regrets to inform the Flash that she has a fiancé. Future!Spitfire.


**Disclaimer- Don't own Young Justice or any of it's characters**.

**Oh look, my muse! Oh lawdy, this idea's been brewing in my head for awhile, and I was pining for some future!Wally/Artemis stuff so... here we go! Hope you guys dig it, just something silly and fluffy and maybe a little OOC because oops I fail.**

**o.o.o.o**

Gotham was sweltering, humid like an oven, trapped beneath a thick layer of black clouds rolling dangerously across the tops of the tallest skyscrapers. The deep, ominous roar of thunder could be heard every so often, warning the residents of the crime-ridden city to get indoors before the inevitable cloudburst that would threaten floods and overflow the sewers.

Mother Nature could not deter the scum of the night, though. Rain, snow, sleet or shine, Gotham was a veritable who's who of who can rob the most banks, murder the most people or finally put Batman's head on a pike. The coming storm did nought to lessen the number of muggings, or the blare of car alarms wailing into the night, warning owners who were far too afraid to venture out and stop their cars from being ransacked. They could only watch in dismay from their tenement buildings and hope they hadn't been foolish enough to leave wallets or cash lying about in their glove compartments.

There was one good thing that could be said: for every ten criminals prowling the streets and alleyways, there was a hero to stop them, and just like the never-resting, never-miss-an-opportunity, all-types-of-weather nefarious villains that pillaged the night world of Gotham City, they were relentless and impervious to anything the weather radar could throw at them, determined to protect their town and their people.

Huntress was one such hero this night, fueled by a kind of giddy happiness she rarely allowed herself. It radiated into her muscles, her very bones, and eked out in the smile plastered to her face as she sighted down the shaft of the arrow, fingers itching against the deep green fletch as she followed the progress of a mugger with a handbag tucked underneath his leather jacket.

_Typical_.

She'd been on patrol for the last three hours, and this was as much as she could find, thanks to damn Nightwing always getting on the scene while the action was still hot. It was a shame, too, because she was wound up, ready for anything, her body coiled for an intense fight with harrowing near-death experiences that left her shaky and covered in grime and sweat.

Artemis felt like she could take on the world.

With a sigh of breath like a wisp of cool air on a winter morning, Huntress released the taut bowstring, let the projectile fly and had drawn another and released it before the first had reached its target, striking true to pin the shoulder of his scuffed leather jacket to the nearest storefront wall. The thug cried out in stupefied surprise, hands uncurling instinctively. The bag he'd been clutching dropped to the sidewalk with a thud Huntress could hear all the way from her perch on the parapet of a low apartment building across the street.

"Hmmm..." she hummed, only half-satisfied with her work. She could've done a bit better, maybe used a few more well placed shots to make the guy piss himself before pinning him up for the cops, but as long as he'd been stopped, that's what mattered. Her mood couldn't be dampered though, not with the way things had gone the day before, the questions that had been asked. She never thought something like _that _could make her feel so... invincible.

Huntress collapsed her bow, pulled the compact crossbow from the holster on her thigh and had just imbedded a grappling arrow into the building across from her when she heard the familiar, maddening cackle of Nightwing as he whisked by overheard, a dark misplacement of hot air that ruffled her ponytail and forced it over her shoulder harshly.

"You beat me to that one, Huntress, but don't expect it to happen again!" he called good-naturedly. Artemis grinned, catching the briefest glimpse of the deep blue symbol on his chest as he swung passed, the sound of his grappling hook whistling through the air to sink into the bricks of a building just out of sight.

"Leave some for the rest of us, I'm in a good mood!" she shouted back, feeling almost as if she were chatting with the night itself. Thunder boomed in the distance, a deep burst of sound that rumbled up through the very foundation of Gotham and up through the archer's heels.

"I can imagine! Congratulations, by the way!"

_Of _course _Dick knew. _

His reply had been distant, continuously moving away from her position, so instead of a response that would likely fallen upon deaf ears, she mentally laughed to herself and swung down into the gap between buildings below.

Artemis would be damned if she was going to let this good mood go to waste.

**o.o.o.o**

A few more petty convicts later and Huntress was almost positive that Dick had actually let up a little on his over-enthusiastic war on crime tonight, because she'd bagged at least ten more shady looking fellows since their friendly exchange. He wasn't leaving anything good for her, though. Nothing even remotely close to the dangerous and thrilling encounters she'd been hoping for.

The clouds overhead were pitch black now, roiling far above the blonde vigilante like an untamed ocean before the approach of a hurricane until even the flickering streetlights below provided little illumination. Huntress had her bow out again, this time aimed at the back of an unsuspecting car thief who was looking pretty new to the job, judging by how much trouble he was having with his crowbar and the window. She sighed, let her grey eyes roll in a tight circle of disappointment at the sorry excuses for crime Dick was leaving behind for her to pick off.

One of these days she'd figure out a way to outpace him, but until then...

Lightning flashed, bright and searing in the atramentous environment. The first rain drops began to pelt down, hitting the places where her flesh was exposed and dripping from the tip of her polyurethane arrow as she prepared to fire.

"Hey, beautiful."

Huntress blanched, distracted and startled by the deep voice right behind her ear wrapping around her body like a physical manifestation of the warm, muggy air that she sucked into her lungs at the sound. Her fingers slipped on the wet bowstring with a wavering twang, sent the arrow flying off on a crooked arch that brought it down on the hood of the car rather than the would-be mugger. The scrawny kid screamed in shock, made a break for it down the road with his wet sneakers slapping loudly against the dark pavement.

Huntress rounded on the source of her screw up, but was met with only a red and yellow blur that darted by her in the blink of an eye.

"Whoops, don't worry, I got this," his voice floated into her ears as she whirled in time to catch him streaking down the shear side of the shop wall. The hooligan had barely made it twenty steps away from the vehicle when the blur reached him, yanked him into a powerful spin that left his brain rattling around in his head like a tin can full of marbles. She wasn't sure where he got the rope from, but he'd tied the kid up and set him on the sidewalk, dizzy as a dodo bird, before skidding to a perfect halt in front of her a nanosecond later, leaning lazily against the parapet as if nothing had happened.

"As I was saying: hey, babe."

Artemis crossed her arms at him, shifting her weight over to one hip haughtily.

"You ruined my shot," she growled, torn somewhere between being pissed and highly amused. That seemed to be her attitude toward the Flash more often than not, and it could be a bit tiring constantly warring with yourself on whether to laugh or punch him in the arm. She'd had years of practice, though.

"Sorry. You were just taking so long and I got impatient when you started to look like a drowned cat," he mused blandly, smirking down at her. She scoffed and shoved him lightly on the chest, picking up the quiver she had rested against her calves before turning away from him.

"What are you doing in my city anyway, Flash boy?" Huntress inquired, blowing water from her plump lips as she did so. Her voice held a note of of playful teasing, one that didn't go missed by the king of playful banter himself. He zoomed up beside her, falling into step, his gloved fingertips brushing against hers as they swung their arms back and forth in careful sync.

"Oh, I came for another one of our forbidden, moonlit meetings on the roofs of Gotham City!" Flash stated with a dramatic, lovelorn sigh. Artemis snorted so violently that she sucked a few drops of water up her nose and laughed, hard.

The sky was unleashing a torrent now, plastering the loose, sweaty strands of Huntress' ponytail to her face and no doubt filling her quiver full to boot. She cast a glance at her companion, saw that the ginger hair sticking out the top of his deep red cowl was clinging around his forehead, giving her a plethora of mental images of her fiancé fresh out of the shower with nary a towel wrapped around his waist. Her lids hooded at the thought and she didn't bother to berate herself mentally.

More lightning lit up around them. She smiled at him.

"You picked a hell of a night, Flash," she began with a mischievous look. Then she shrugged and let her eyes focus on the natural ceiling above the skyscrapers. "But I'm afraid we can't do this anymore."

Her words had the desired effect. Flash's infectious grin faded into a hurt frown that sagged his entire face until he was akin to a kicked puppy. Huntress had to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing and ruining the game.

"Wha'? B-but I thought we had something special going on here, beautiful!"

She gave him the most bored, uninterested look she could muster under such short notice.

"I hardly call a stolen kiss on the hood of the Batmobile "something special."

"Hey, I think you mean a stolen _make-out_, because jeez, Huntress, you almost clawed through the back of my uniform when I—"

She stopped him by pressing her palm flat against his blabbering mouth, her face flushed from both the memory and the utter embarrassment when they had been caught by the Dark Knight himself. But, hey, they'd been on patrol and they'd been flirting all night long, so when they'd actually been lucky enough to stumble across the Batmobile parked in an alley, of _course _Flash had talked her(more like begged her) into smooching him on the hood of it just so they could say they had.

Only, you know, things had escalated a little above and beyond just a smooch.

Needless to say, they'd never been lucky enough to find the Batmobile again after that little escapade.

"Not the point!" she blurted out. If she didn't stop him now, he'd go on to point out all the other times they'd stolen heated kisses on the rooftops, not to mention the one time they'd-

"Then what _is _the point?"

"The _point_," Huntress said, locking her steely gaze on his,"is that I have a fiancé."

His mouth dropped.

"_Who!?"_

She turned her back on him because if she looked at him any longer she'd burst out laughing and lose all her self control. The things he did to her...

"Goes by the name of Wally West. He can be a handful sometimes, but... well, somehow he wormed his way into my heart and now I'm stuck with him," she sighed out loudly, making sure to throw in a disgustingly love-sick tone to her voice to make him squirm(and make her gag internally). Then she turned to look at him with a sassy, hooded smirk. "And he's pretty good in bed, too."

The Flash's face lit up like a kid's on Christmas morning.

"I a—I mean: TMI! God, I don't need to know about your sex life, Huntress!" he cried out, pretending to be completely revolted. He composed himself, however, and marched slowly up to her with his hands behind his lower back, didn't stop until he was so close to her that her chest brushed against his own as she drew in a deep breathe of humid oxygen.

"Flash..." she mumbled, not sure of what exactly he was pulling now. Their charade should've ended ages ago with them both dissolving into peels of laughter.

"It's too bad, Huntress... because, well... I was going to ask you something. Important."

His tone was quiet, calculating. He brought his hand up to brush the water away from her forehead just as another harsh crack of thunder ripped through the the night, shuddering right up through their very bones as the rain came down harder than ever, dripping from their lashes and trailing sensuously across unveiled skin.

Her heart skipped a single beat, truly curious about this entire asinine situation.

"Oh? What's that?"

Before Huntress could gather her wits about her, before she could even begin to fathom what he could possibly be about to ask, he lurched forward unsteadily onto one knee, nearly losing his balance with his enthusiasm. Somehow he managed to keep his lips in a straight line as he pulled a deep, velvety green box from seemingly nowhere, thrusting it forward beneath her nose as he popped the lid open, revealing a simple yet stunning band inside.

Her eyes widened, because it was completely different from the one he'd proposed to her with the day before, the one she had tucked away in the bedside table of their apartment for fear of losing it on the job.

He'd bought her _two _engagement rings.

"Will you marry me?"

For a moment she couldn't respond, simply blinked away the rain water that had snaked it's way down her mask to wind up in her eye.

"You've got some nerve, Flash!" she choked out jokingly. It felt like there was some sort of balloon swelling inside her chest, constricting her airways like the thick muscles of a boa around it's unsuspecting prey, and she wasn't sure if she liked it or not, not sure if she would ever grow accustomed to this ridiculous amount of felicity that Wally always seemed able to bring out in her. It was unnatural.

Wally smiled softly at her.

"You can drop the charade now, Artemis."

"But, Wa—Flash, I—I already said ye—"

"No, you said yes to _Wally_, not the Flash," Wally told her, winking. "And you might want to hurry up and give him your answer, because he's starting to get sweaty palms."

"You already know the answer!" she shouted in a seemingly bad temper. Before Wally could do anything she'd moved forward, grabbed his slick face between her hands and molded his lips to hers in a passionate crash that nearly bowled them both over. Artemis could taste the fresh rain on him, could taste that he'd eaten one of the those damnable chocolate protein bars of his before he'd arrived to harass her on the rooftop.

It was a good taste.

"Mmmm... shall we take this to the apartment?" he asked rather huskily as they broke away.

"That's the third stupidly obvious question you've asked in two days," Huntress replied saucily, and he chuckled as he scooped her up into his arms and had them back to their apartment so fast it nearly made her head spin.

Needless to say, they found themselves breathless and hot and tangled in their sheets not long after, and as Artemis straddled him with the tantalizing prospect of round two, they both had to agree that it was far better than any romp they'd nearly had on the hood of the Batmobile in a stinking alleyway.

But they could still say they'd made out on it, of course.


End file.
